As Trump Said Unlikely To Lift Huawei Ban, Kudlow Cries ‘Fake News, Just For The Heck Of It’ – Or Something

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Xi Jinping will present Donald Trump with a list of conditions for resolving the Sino-US trade spat.

It wasn’t entirely clear whether the resumption of formal negotiations hinges on Trump accepting those conditions or whether talks can resume before the conditions are met as long as there’s an understanding that no deal can be reached until Beijing is satisfied.

One of those conditions is said to be a lifting of the ban on Huawei. Fast forward a couple of hours and Reuters says Trump isn’t inclined to acquiesce to that.

The Huawei card is one the administration waited to play until talks broke down, but the detention of Meng Wanzhou should have been a red flag for Beijing in December. To be sure, China didn’t take kindly to Meng’s arrest, and Beijing retaliated harshly against two Canadian citizens, but Xi probably should have called off the truce as soon as it became clear that Meng was being used as human leverage in the trade dispute.

US officials variously insisted that Huawei, Meng and national security more generally, would be kept separate from the trade negotiations, but Trump’s move to blacklist the company proved that was a lie. Period.

Now, national security is inextricably bound up with the trade discussions and if the Hikvision threat is any indication, “human rights” will be the next excuse for blacklisting Chinese entities.

The bottom line is that Trump isn’t likely to simply give up on the Huawei ban because doing so would undermine the administration’s insistence that the company is a threat to national security. US officials have badgered other nations to take the same approach to the company, so it would look bad if Trump agreed to simply forget about the ban in the interest of striking a trade deal.

A Bloomberg report revealing more ties between Huawei and the PLA doesn’t help the situation, nor does news that Micron and other US tech companies have figured out a way to circumvent the Commerce department’s ban.

“Over the past decade, Huawei workers have teamed with members of various organs of the People’s Liberation Army on at least 10 research endeavors spanning artificial intelligence to radio communications”, Bloomberg revealed Thursday, detailing “a joint effort with the investigative branch of the Central Military Commission to extract and classify emotions in online video comments, and an initiative with the elite National University of Defense Technology to explore ways of collecting and analyzing satellite images and geographical coordinates.”

Even if Trump were inclined to roll back the ban, it’s hard to see how he could in light of recent reports and considering hardliners within the administration are said to be vexed by news that Micron and others have endeavored to beat the blacklisting with what amounts to a loophole overlooked by Commerce. (One former Commerce official says “loophole” isn’t the correct way to characterize it.)

So, it looks like the Huawei ban will remain – or at least according to Reuters, who also cited a senior administration official in saying that Trump’s decision on whether or not to impose additional tariffs on China will depend on the meeting with Xi.

Meanwhile, Larry Kudlow claimed that reports of preconditions were false. “I don’t know where those stories came from”, he said, according to CNBC. “It’s too bad: I hate to say it, but it is fake news”. Please feel free to roll your eyes.

Kudlow went on to deliver this collection or words:

The president says we’re in a good spot. He also says he’s happy to talk to President Xi, to have a good relationship and if something good comes out of those talks or if China were to offer us a good deal in the future, we might be willing to change some of our views.

Thanks, Larry. And just in case that’s not indeterminate enough for you, Kudlow offered this as well:

Look, let’s see what happens, just for the heck of it. Without speculating or forecasting.

Lookin’ good, folks. Lookin’ good.